Culture in the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda: A Report by the Culture 2030 Goal Campaign
2.1 OVERVIEW AND METHODOLOGY A breakdown is provided below of each year’s major events related to the SDGs, including the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), with their overarching theme, SDGs selected for review, Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) (in terms of exemplary content, and keyword analysis), as well as other key documents and activities, including the outcome declarations and the presence of culture sector actors, analysing these with a critical cultural perspective. To recall the basic characteristics of the process, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as part of its follow-up and review mechanisms, encourages member states to “conduct regular and inclusive reviews of progress at the national and sub-national levels, which are country-led and country-driven”. These national reviews are expected to serve as a basis for the regular reviews by the HLPF. The VNRs aim to facilitate the sharing of experiences, including successes, challenges and lessons learned, with a view to accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The VNRs also seek to strengthen policies and institutions of governments and to mobilize multi-stakeholder support and partnerships for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.8 The HLPF, which adopts a Ministerial Declaration, is expected to provide political leadership, guidance and recommendations on the 2030 Agenda’s implementation and follow-up; keep track of progress of the SDGs; spur coherent policies informed by evidence, science and country experiences; as well as address new and emerging issues.9 A special analytical exercise has been conducted for this report, comprising the measurement of frequency for certain keywords, both for culture and related concepts, and for other concepts with particular affinity with, or mentioned in conjunction with culture in the VNRs prepared for all HLPF, 2016-19.10 To make the keyword counts meaningful, we have set them as comparable analyses, including: • the distribution of terms within the culture field, • the comparison of the ‘cultural’ with the other three dimensions of sustainable development, i.e. ‘social’, ‘economic’ and ‘environmental’, • the comparison of culture-related terms when used directly in cultural contexts and when used with other, more generic meanings, • the comparison of countries in terms of their level of usage of the terms ‘culture’ and ‘cultural’. The ‘culture-related terms’, numbering 21 as main headings (in bold) and 100 as broken down into subterms, include:
8. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/vnrs/ 9. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/hlpf/2016 10. Only full VNR reports (with the exception of China’s Executive Summary), in the English, French and Spanish languages, were taken into account, due to resource constraints.
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